Reproductive rights supporter to speak in Albany on threats to women's freedom

Reposted from the Albany Times Union. By Claire Hughes.

The most recent affront on reproductive rights supporters’ minds may be last week’s move by the Trump administration making it easier for employers to deny contraception coverage to workers by claiming a religious or moral exemption.

Michele Goodwin, however, will remind feminists in Albany on Thursday that the rollback of federal rules requiring employers to provide coverage is only the latest in a pattern of offenses against women’s freedom going back seven years.

“This is an era in which there have been dramatic and unprecedented attacks on women’s reproductive access and rights,” Goodwin said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Goodwin is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and founder of the school’s Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy, including its Reproductive Justice Initiative. She is will speak at a luncheon for Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood’s Women’s Leadership Circle. The group of local women philanthropists have pledged at least $1,000 a year to the provider of women’s reproductive services.

Since the 2010 passage of the federal Affordable Care Act, which included insurance coverage for family planning and maternity care, lawmakers in states around the country have proposed and enacted more anti-contraception, anti-abortion legislation than in the previous 30 years, Goodwin said. Federal proposals, too, were more extreme than in decades, seeking, for instance, to restrict abortions even in cases of rape, incest and risk to the mother’s health.

Goodwin referred to a backlash against women’s rights that in recent years has included lots of dog whistling – coded language like, “We’re just trying to save the babies” — that hides an agenda to limit women’s independence.

One trend she noted was charging pregnant women with the crime of causing harm to a fetus. In recent years, this has included arrests in some states for falling down stairs. Goodwin mentioned, too, the case of Alicia Beltran of Wisconsin who was jailed four years ago after telling her doctor she had beat an addiction to pills before her pregnancy, which resulted in her fetus being assigned a court-appointed lawyer.

“This is what it looks like when women’s reproduction becomes sport,” Goodwin said.

While many Americans might disagree Goodwin’s positions, she will speak Thursday to an audience likely to be receptive to her ideas. Some issues she raises may seem less urgent in New York, where the Cuomo administration has vowed to continue to require access to abortion and contraception coverage in health insurance.

But Goodwin said New York women have much at stake in the current political environment, should the U.S. Supreme Court rule abortion to be illegal, for instance. In addition, she said, New Yorkers assume their responsibility to American women elsewhere.

Event Details

Women's Leadership Circle Luncheon

Wolfert's Roost Country Club

Thursday, Oct. 12, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Open to the public

Cost: $25-$75

Register: http://bit.ly/2ga5vOS